Up to 4 billion people left without water. Up to 5 billion at risk of flooding. Half a billion left hungry as agricultural yields decline by 15-35% in Africa with entire swaths of the world ceasing food production altogether. More than 80 million exposed to malaria in Africa. The Amazon collapses and 50% of species go extinct. It's basically the end of the world. And it's reported in this morning's Guardian.Oh, noes! The end of the world! And only the ‘Guardian’ can save us!
There is such a gaping chasm between the matter-of-fact reporting of this nightmarish 4C scenario that government scientists now say we should be planning for, and the total failure of apparently rational people to understand what is happening on the Hoo peninsula this week.Repent, sinners, and all will be well! Confess, confess thy sins and be saved…
Reports from Kingsnorth, the site of this year's climate camp, completely fail to scrutinise the pin-striped criminals who are pushing the planet towards the brink. Instead, the Press Association runs stories on apparent conspiracies to attack police with knives without even phoning the accused activists for a reaction to these smears. What other set of people could be accused of conspiracy to commit cop killings without being asked for any reaction? This is a victory for the police and the rightwing media they leak to.Huh? The police need to ask permission of Swampy before announcing the find of a weapon’s cache? When did they pass that law…?
This is embarrassing. Not content with publishing (and then hastily closing) barking mad Bindel’s column yesterday, the Guardian now allow this third-rate sixth form agitprop to stick up the pages of ‘CiF’.
The harsh reality is that there is no way we could plan for a 4C rise. No amount of adaptation is going to make that liveable for most of the world's population, and it's going to be pretty damn nasty for those lucky few of us living in the north as well.Oh, make up your mind! Just at the start of this article you were whining that government scientists say we should be planning for it but the eeeevvviiiillll capitalists refuse to go along with there plans, and now you’re claiming we are all doomed regardless.
Hint: No-one is buying your argument anymore – that’s why you and your watermelon pals are getting ever more incoherent in your demands. Time to give it up…
4 comments:
What these greenies are describing, although they don't realise it, is a perfectly natural phenomenon, a population crash.
I may poke fun at the greenies all the time on my blog, but I'm not necessarily disagreeing with their predictions. I think they are probably premature, but with world population ever rising, and easily won resources finite, it's only a matter of time until their fears come to pass.
It's a crying shame that as members of the only species ever in the history of this planet with the intelligence to foresee what will probably eventually happen, we seem powerless to act decisively, and must allow nature to take it's course instead.
The greenies still act like the stupidest of lemmings, refusing to acknowledge any malthusian factor, or to take the selfish and apathetic aspects of human nature into account in pursute of their religious cause. This is why I can't stop myself poking fun at them. As if sorting your cardboard waste, putting a windmill on your roof, and banning plastic carrier bags is going to effect what the future has in store for us, it's laughable.
The only answers I can think of would probably require an authoritarian, world government to enforce them. As a libertarian, there is no way I could accept this, hence my cynicism. It's all I have left to offer in the debate.
"I think they are probably premature, but with world population ever rising, and easily won resources finite, it's only a matter of time until their fears come to pass."
World population might be rising, but most of the reports I've seen seem to indicate that in the West, fertility is falling.
That promises some interesting times ahead...
"The only answers I can think of would probably require an authoritarian, world government to enforce them."
I think the only prediction I can make is that I'll never see that in my lifetime. For which I'm grateful!
It is true that population is the real issue. The per capita demand on this one finite planet's resources is rising hugely, decade by decade, and there is no other basket into which to put some of our human 'eggs' (to paraphrase the Bob Silverberg quote).
Unfortunately, population control will become essential soon, though a significant drop in fertility should help to some extent. I don't see any alternative.
If we were spread over several worlds the situation would be less severe and at least we would survive as a species even if one world became uninhabitable for us -- but we aren't.
Lets stop pumping cash etc into the third world. We are interfering with nature and making the problem worse.
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